Let the Little Sisters Serve

Nice little charity you have here Little Sisters of the Poor.  Twenty-seven homes across the nation where all you do all day is care for the elderly and the sick all of your lives…and it’s true, you’ve done this for over 150 years regardless of a person’s capacity to pay or religious affiliation.  Even though you are sisters, your non-profit is not religious enough to warrant an exemption.  We, the government, in an effort to provide affordable health care for everyone, will shut down a non-profit serving the people we’ve claimed the H.S.S. mandate is supposed to serve.  

One has to ask “Why?”

The Little Sisters of the Poor do not want to provide for anti-conception medications for their employees via insurance.   They have up to this point, provided insurance which did not violate the tenets of their faith, and want the same protection they’ve always had, to not be forced even third party, to enable anyone to engage in an action they know through their faith to be immoral.  The government has termed these products to be necessary as part of all health care plans, and thus demands they be provided.  The Little Sisters cannot opt out.  They can only opt to sign a letter saying they understand the products will be given under a third party.   It’s a bit like signing a form to say, I will not provide alcohol, but the caterer I paid for, will supply it to the meeting for those dealing with substance abuse.  

Opponents worry granting the Little Sisters of the Poor their moral objection will create a “slippery slope,” where businesses and non-profits in an effort to reduce costs, will create their own religions that eliminate procedures if the exception is given to these women.   The problem with that “slippery slope” is reality.  The Little Sisters have had insurance without providing for these items for years, out of principle.   Scores of non-profits knew about that option, to provide insurance without paying for birth control and abortifacients, and they did not opt to take the cost cutting measure of a policy that covered less for their employees because they held no moral objection.   Most non profits, most people and many religions, have no moral objection to providing birth control, ergo, granting the Little Sisters an exemption not going to create a stampede of businesses and non profits  suing the government for the right not to provide such services which so many people favor.

However, the slippery slope in the opposite manner is very reasonable if past is prologue.   Today the government deemed birth control pills non-negotionable.  Tomorrow, it may be abortion itself.  Euthanasia is also a likely necessary service if enough people deem it reasonable.  Violation after violation of one’s moral codes will be mandated via the third party thinking system.   IVF, IUD’s, and countless other procedures the Church has deemed morally objectionable, will be demanded under the fig leaf argument that, it’s not me…it’s just the insurance.   Anyone else hear echoes of “It’s not me Kate, it’s my family.” 

Only an irony impaired and power hungry bureaucracy could think persecuting an order of sisters dedicated to caring for the sick and needy would be an imperative demanding a fine of 70 million dollars and a legal battle all the way up to the Supreme Court. Common sense alone would dictate not stopping such people from providing consistent compassionate daily care to countless individuals.   Further, the government has already allotted multiple exemptions and grandfather clauses to corporations, not because of their religious convictions, but political contributions and capacity to provide political contributions.  

So why would the government push so hard against a well-known well established non-profit run by sisters?   It isn’t to bankrupt them.  It’s to make a public example of them to the rest of us.    After all, if these women dedicated to God and serving the poor are not religious enough to merit an exemption for their non-profit, who can stand against the H.S.S. mandate based on their religious convictions.  We must pay for birth control. We must pay for abortifacients. We must pay for abortions.  We must pay for IVF, we must pay for all things, even those we deem objectionable.   Obedience to the state must take precedence to obedience to God, or one’s religion.   Don’t fret little nuns.   We absolve you of any culpability in this action, we’ve declared what you think a sin, to be a right, ergo it is not sinful.   So what if your church says differently.  So what if you think enabling sin is a sin itself. It’s not relevant.  All must serve the state.  

Please, let the Little Sisters serve the poor as they always have.   Tell the court, tell your President, tell Congress to stand with the Little Sisters, and preserve religious liberty for all.  

A Catholic Cassandra Call Out

Kathleen Sebelius declares that her policy mandating that all institutions and organizations provide for coverage of birth control and sterilization and abortifacient medications respects religion.  It respects her religion. Kathleen is a practicing faithful Democrat. 

I've been reading the defense of this policy that drew a swift and sure response from a body of people that normally don't agree on anything, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  This policy declares that the government shall decide which tenets of your faith you may follow and which you must abandon.  This policy declares that the government shall tell you the limits of how you shall practice your faith --i.e. you may decide for yourself it is morally wrong, but you must purchase it for your neighbor.  If it is morally wrong in my eyes, then it is morally wrong for me to aid and albeit you in an action.   This policy declares that it shall deem what is tolerated by the state.  Nothing else is permitted.   Think I overstate? 

Does anyone believe if this is allowed to pass that we shall not be made to provide additional services we deem morally wrong after the election?  Like actual abortion?  We'll get the same smarmy worthy of a 6th grader line, Don't like an abortion, don't have one.  But pay for someone else.  That's like saying, don't like drunk drivers? Don't drive drunk.  But pay for that chronic alcoholic's next round and hand him the keys.

Having read Sebelius's article in USAToday and others on Real Clear Politics, I wanted to do a bit of fact checking.

From Sebelius: "The religious exemption in the administration's rule is the same as the exemption in Oregon, New York and California. Of the 28 states that currently require contraception to be covered by insurance, eight have no religious exemption at all."

Note: That means 22 states don't require contraception to be covered by insurance and of the 28 that do, 20 have religious exemptions.  42 States don't demand religious organizations violate their core beliefs by purchasing products they deem immoral.  That's a fairly solid majority of State policies you're overriding Kathleen via bureaucratic fiat. This is an argument for a sweeping new policy? 

I started by wondering, what do the Church institutions in those 8 states do. Do they already violate their stated purpose and the Church's teachings? In some cases, regrettably, yes.  And that was the nose of the camel. I began with New York, one of the three states mentioned by Sebelius. 

Guess what? 

"Indeed, New York passed the Women’s Health and Wellness Act in 2002, requiring health plans to cover contraception and other services aimed at women, including mammography, cervical cancer screenings and bone density exams.

The New York law, which has its own religious exemption, was upheld after several court challenges. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. At the time, church-related institutions were considering whether to drop prescription drug benefits as a way to circumvent the law."

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2012/02/bishop_takes_up_catholics_chur.html

What a surprise. 

There IS a religious exemption in New York. How inconvenient a truth. But it's limited.  The Diocese of Syracuse schools uses self insurance to get around the prescription benefit issue and is exempt from the law itself.   

On to California: Back in 2004, Catholic Charities lost a court case that went to the Supreme Court of California, where they were told they had to provide birth control to their employees in the state.  The words of Mark Chopko, counsel to the USCCB at the time proved prophetic.

"This case has very, very long arms," said Mark Chopko, counsel to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which filed a court brief in support of Catholic Charities. It raises the question, he said, of "who gets to say what's a religious organization: the religious organization or the government?"

Here, is where the HHS draws its inspiration.  California operates under the Don't Ask, Just Sell mandate of it's court, that Catholicism needn't worry itself about the taint of buying immoral things because the state has decided, they're necessary. 

Sin corrodes. 

California Catholic West Healthcare complied and thus eventually as a result allowed itself to erode its moral thinking to allow for abortions and award grants to abortion businesses and then because of the flack it got from Bishops and the faithful and the like, eliminated the name Catholic, changing their name to Dignity Health care.   So they did not turn their hearts.  And when they did not turn their hearts, they turned their name, so we'll know them by their limping.

I did a brief search of the Internet for the other six states and found this disturbingly accurate and well thought out Guttenmacher chart that lays the whole thing out on a state by state basis.  I recommend reading it all.  What bothers me is the timely execution of this clean chart that dovetails nicely with Sebelius's speech. 

The states which have no religious exemptions simply have limited religious exemptions that are extremely narrow, and which in most cases require hospitals to provide prescriptions. 

In most cases, the Catholic institutions affected opt to self insure to "get around" but that is now deemed wrong under the EEOC.  We are going to be squeezed into compliance becoming like Dignity Health Care, or forced to fight outright. 

That is the end goal.

The initial paragraph mentions how the DHHS indicates those existing exemptions that exist with respect to contraception probably will be faded out in the coming years. Why does the Guttenmacher Institute think this? How does it know?

I haven't discovered why, but I have a pretty good guess.

The alternative, to drop coverage entirely shall inflate the rolls of uninsured. The increases shall eventually require that Healthcare be a single provider coverage (for the good of all) from the government.  Welcome to check and mate, coming in 2013 when the time to live by one's moral compass in this country officially expires.

So I'm mad. I'm mad at this administration. I'm mad at the way we've allowed ourselves to believe that we could have just a bit of the apple and it wouldn't corrupt us all the way.  All it took was a bite.  It was the intent itself, it was the willingness to entertain sin, the willingness to encourage it in others, the willingness to put something between ourselves and our Creator, to put limits on our love and declare limits on our willingness to live out our Faith. 

And if the lions come, I'm going to roar back at them.

If you'ld like to roar too: http://catholic-advocate.rallycongress.com/

or http://www.catholicvote.org/index.php?/site/actions_details/oppose_contraception_coverage/

Thoughts on Birth Control

This past weekend the administration came forth with it's final policy which will require all employers with very few exceptions to provide free of co-pays, deductibles or other contributions, prescription birth control for those who wish it.  Catholic hospitals, universities and other charitable organizations that perform their corporeal acts of mercy as an outreach of their faith, shall not be exempted. 

In other words, it does not matter if you morally object, you can worship as you like, just don't practice it in real life.   Don't integrate your faith into every corner of your hearth and home and business or livelihood, keep your religion on Sunday only, safe and locked up inside the church walls.  Don't let it change how you live, how you buy, how you conduct business.   Don't worry that your taxes pay for more war now, or for abortion abroad, or for Planned Parenthood to play around with it's books so as to continue lobbying for more money to continue killing.  After all, you're just funding all these things, you aren't using them. 

Our ancestors in faith went into fire and Colosseums filled with lions for less.  We're being asked to erode our own faith in thimbles.  Deny this small fragment of the cross, and everyone will get along. Cover up the pictures of the Cross and take down the crucifix so everyone is comfortable. God will understand. Our God is a loving God, ergo, if we fudge on this or that, it won't matter.  These are just details and God isn't interested in the details. 

There are two great ways to Hell, deliberate choice and indifferent sloth. Either we plunge in the boiling water or we allow the water to gradually reach a boil; in both scenarios, we are scalded.

Our society is demanding we acknowledge our faith less and less.  Don't quibble or speak up when people live together or use the pill or even flinch when sex is glorified in all ways but that which glorifies on television and online.  Say nothing. Get along.  It's not you so it doesn't matter.  We are being taught to care less and less, to love less and less, to do less and less, even for those around us we love.  You don't really need to go to church. You don't really need to pray. You don't really need to believe that the Eucharist is fully Christ fully present.  God won't be mad or unhappy with you if you use birth control, live together, have affairs, watch pornography, have an addiction or in some way let something else be more dominant in your life than Him.  He's not hung up on the sacraments.  It's a caustic eroding voice that constantly whispers in one way or another, God doesn't care what you do. 

The thing is, if God doesn't care what you do, then God doesn't care about you personally.  An all loving God would care more about what you do than your mother or father, and I care profoundly about what my kids do and don't do, what they say and don't say, what they think and don't think, and I hope I steer them towards good things, things that will bring them joy, fulfillment, beauty and truth. God has to care more than me, ergo, there is nothing we do that God doesn't care about more.

God knows how souls grow or shrink.  At some point on the road of shrugging one's shoulders about what one ought to be engaged in doing, the soul gets mad and then the decision becomes wilful.  It is then we are in greatest peril.  When we declare to God, "I don't care." what we're really saying is, "I don't want to care.  So I'm choosing not to." The serpent knows we are lazy and desirous of always choosing the easier seemingly softer path.  So he whispers to us that we can do less. We can love less.  That we will love more if we have fewer to love.  And that we will still be loved --that is true, but the reality is that we will recognize that love in action less if we act with less love in our lives.

We are fallen, so we always get things backwards when it comes to thinking like God. We always think we can outfox Him or come up with a legal argument that will be irrefutable.  It is proof of our pride that we perpetually delude ourselves into thinking either God doesn't care or God can be bemused into giving us a mulligan on parts of our lives.   I know there are people who will say, this is no big deal.  People work at all kinds of jobs and pay into their insurance plans which fund abortions and prescription drugs, sex changes and sterilizations.  The federal government demanding that there be no exceptions is no biggie. 

It is a biggie.  We're not supposed to quietly accept the corroding of our souls or the undermining of our values at our institutions or in our families.  We're supposed to speak out, to remind those in power, those making the decisions, that this is wrong, that this injures, that this prevents us from living fully our lives according to the religion we hold true.  To those who shrug, next time, the recommendations will probably demand abortion be covered as well.  Little sin, little indifference, leads to bigger sin, bigger wrongs.  This world will never become better or less wrong if we keep allowing little sins and little sins and little sins by our silence.  This world will not become less broken by acquiescing to get along.  Appeasement never works, in political policy or the soul. 

The goal is genuine peace, and that only comes from self sacrifice, selfless love, and being willing to hold onto the whole heart, the whole cross, the whole Eucharist.  Loving God first means everything else is secondary, and that includes Caesar.